A former Westminster College student, whose arrest last summer during a demonstration in her home country made international news, has been detained in Maldives again.

Shauna Aminath, a 2008 graduate of the Fulton, Mo., private school, was with 15 other members of the Maldives Democratic Party arrested over the weekend during a peaceful demonstration against the current government.

Aminath, in her mid 20s and described by her longtime Westminster friends as “a brave activist” and “very much loved,” is president of the MDP Youth Wing, and was deputy undersecretary in the administration of former President Mohamed Nasheed, whose administration was removed in a coup d’etat by the present regime a year ago.

After graduation, Aminath returned to Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, with bachelor’s degrees in political science and ecological economics and an interest in climate change.